base;--everything fair, bright, and high in womanhood seems to combine in
Romola. So true, also, is the process of her development to what is
called nature--to the laws and principles that regulate human action and
life--that, as it proceeds before us, we almost lose note that there is
development. The fair young heathen first presented to us, linked on to
classic times and moralities through all the surroundings of her life,
passes on so imperceptibly into the "visible Madonna" of the after-time,
that we scarcely observe the change till it is accomplished. From the
first, we know that the mature is involved in the young Romola. The
reason of this is, that from first to last the essential principle of
life is in her the same. Equally, when she first comes before us, and in
all the after-glory of her serene unconscious self-devotedness, she is
living to others, not to herself.

Her first devotion is to her father. Her one passion of life is to
compensate to him all he has lost: the eyes, once so full of fire, now
sightless; the son and brother, who, at the call of an enthusiasm with
which their nobler natures refuse to sympathise--for it was, in the first
instance, but the supposed need to save his own soul--has fled from his
nearest duty of life. To this devotion she consecrates her fair young
existence. For this she dismisses from it all thought of ease or
pleasure, and chooses retirement and isolation; gives herself to
uncongenial studies and endless labours, and accepts, in uncomplaining
sadness, that which to such a nature is hardest of all to bear--her
father's non-appreciation of all she would be and is to him. From the
first, her life is one of entire self-consecration. The sphere of its
activities expands as years flow on, but the principle is throughout the
same. In the exquisite simplicity, purity, and tenderness of her young
love, she is Romola still. There is no self-isolation included in it.
Side by side with satisfying her own yearning heart, lies the thought